


Bread and Roses

by Carbon65



Series: Newsies Drabbles and Ficlets [9]
Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Canon Compliant, Ficlet, Girlsies, Politics, Post-Canon, Songfic, Women's Suffrage, first wave feminism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2018-06-06
Packaged: 2019-05-19 02:41:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14865101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carbon65/pseuds/Carbon65
Summary: For the rising of the womenMeans the rising of the [human] race





	Bread and Roses

_As we go marching, marching  
In the beauty of the day_

Sarah Jacobs runs her calloused fingers over her thimble and needle and thread, and thanks G-d again that she wasn’t working for Triangle. She knows she would have been among the number on the sidewalk. She knows they need the money, but the factories scare her.

_A million darkened kitchens_  
_A thousand mill lofts grey_

Smalls and Sniper stand together, reading the pape. They’re no longer news girls. They’re grown up with their hair in tight coils and their tenement rooms. Smalls bounces the baby on her hip and lets the toddler cling to her skirts. She’s got laundry to haul to the pump to wash. Sniper goes off to her job, scrubbing floors. Their husbands - hardened men who used to be sweet boys and whose ink stained hands are rough with callouses and the smell of fish - will be tired when they come home. But, they all feel a swell of pride when they read about the women in Lawrence. If they’d had the IWW in 1899. But, they didn’t need the IWW. They had the newsies.

_Are touched with all the radiance  
That a sudden sun discloses_

Katherine pours over the words, looking again and again for something to help her story, and help her cause. Surely - surely, it must be here. Surely there has to be a way, a thread, a story. She wishes she could go to Massachusetts, but with a daughter clinging to her legs, she can’t leave her family. Not now.  
And, then, she finds it. The words she needs. Her flingers fly.

_For the people hear us singing_

The four of them stand in a crowd of hundreds, hearts pounding in their chests. Smalls’ son is in a sling tight against her chest. Sniper stands beside her, rough red hands worrying at her sash. Katherine and Jack’s daughter clings to her skirts and looks around at the men pushing past them. Sarah stands tall, stands up for what feels like the second time in her life. She holds her sign high. And, the six of them step out.

Behind them, Jack and David, Abraham and Les, Jojo and Mush step out with them, marching too.

_Bread and roses, bread and roses_

**Author's Note:**

> _Somehow, these got deleted._
> 
>  
> 
> The song, [_Bread and Roses_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BNSk0dLE5M) is a socialist anthem based on a poem by the same name by James Oppenheim. There are several versions and tunes, but I've linked to the most popular, and probably one of my favorite versions. There's also a really nice one in the move, [Pride](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDdvbqbmM4o). 
> 
> The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire happened in 1911, and killed about 160 people - most of them women - who were trapped when the fire broke out. A significant number chose to jump to their deaths, rather than stay in the burning building.
> 
> The rest of the content references the 1912 strike in Lawrence, MA, which was organized by the International Workers of the World (IWW).


End file.
